NEW DELHI: The country’s top 75 companies spent more than Rs 4,000 crore towards corporate social responsibility in the last fiscal, the first year after the government mandated bigger companies to give away a part of their profits for social work, early estimates of the government show.

The government expects total spending in the first year to top Rs 9,000 crore and rise substantially in coming years, a senior government official said. The initial estimates of the government had pegged CSR spend at Rs 15,000 crore in a year.

“The CSR spend picked up late last year after the necessary CSR framework was put in place by companies,” the official said. Wipro, ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra and Hindustan Unilever are among the 28 companies that met the mandatory CSR spending norm of at least 2% of their annual average net profits for the preceding three years.

The final numbers for 2014-15 and sector wise data for all companies would be computed only by October end when complete filings are received, the official said.

While a number of companies failed to spend the mandatory 2%, experts attribute it to necessary framework being available only later in the year “Out of the 75 top companies, the 2% of average net profits for past three years comes positive for 67 companies; 39 of them have not spent 2% but all of them have shown their commitment towards CSR,” said Santhosh Jayaram, director at KPMG.

Companies needed a separate governance framework for CSR and it took them some time to get everything in place, he said.The government is encouraged by the response.

“Initially, we had thought that companies would wait and watch in the first year as there is no penalty for non-ance. But the compliance has been decent,” said the government official quoted earlier.

As per the initial data, health, education and skill development are the sectors that seem to have attracted large chunks under CSR. Under Companies Act 2013, which came into effect in April last year, companies with a net worth of more than Rs 500 crore or revenue of over Rs 1,000 crore or a net profit of more than Rs 5 crore need to meet the CSR norms.